


A night of troubles

by Bacner



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: A loving relationship, F/M, Gen, Hellfire Club, Minor Spoilers, Mutant Underground, between 2x02 and 2x03, despairing John, hopeful Clarice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 19:40:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16181837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bacner/pseuds/Bacner
Summary: John is feeling unmoored; Clarice tries to help.





	A night of troubles

John could not sleep. A light sleeper by default, after his last talk with Evangeline, he was now struggling with a proper insomnia instead. So many friends, so many people… Gus, reduced to a drugged-out puppet of Sentinels and their allies; Sonya, brought down by the same people just because she was a mutant; Lorna and Andy, who left in search of a better life – and maybe they were right; and all for what? Evangeline, apparently, didn’t know anymore; and the saddest thing? Neither did John.

…Thunderbird wasn’t big into self-pity; he knew that there were plenty of other mutants in the world, (or at least in the U.S.), that had much more obvious and overt mutations than his, and much more useless ones than his, (so far, there were very few mutants that had identical mutations, and most of them were direct siblings as the Frost sisters were), but this wasn’t about his mutant powers; it was about his life.

…John hated change. ‘Hate’ was not the word that he used very often, certainly never towards people, but, truth to tell, he did like order more than chaos, which was why he had joined the military in the first place – and then he had been tested positive for being a mutant and lost everything; he ended up being a pit fighter – and not even a cool one, with a fancy name and a secret identity and a mask; more like a drunken failure who was slowly dying away, one violent fight at a time. Did he forget that he had hated his life?

Enter Evangeline – and once John had a mission in his life; he had a team; he had people – his people, (and he was never going back to his home in the reservation, no, never), and he had a goal. Hell, they were standing on the shoulders of metaphorical giants – X-Men, true heroes, great paragons among the mutants, so how could they fail?

…And then they did. Many mutants died. Almost as many left for the Hellfire Club and what-ever promises it gave-out, (free cheese in a mousetrap, no doubt, but it worked), and the Mutant Underground was left blowing in the wind. Their initial home base – the former X-Men mansion – was gone, destroyed in the battle with the Sentinel Services and their allies – and so they had to start anew. And so they did. And now, after half a year of intense working, when things were finally beginning to work (almost) as well as they once did, Evangeline confessed that she and her people on their side of the equation were about to throw-in the towel and leave them flailing in the wind. Moreover, if they did do exactly that, where would it leave John, and Clarice, and Marcos, and the rest of them? Once more fighting in the pit?

“Oh dear,” Clarice muttered as she sat next to her partner. “You’re in a bad place now. A cloudy night like this is no time to be thinking, especially on your own. A morning can smile. A day can joke. An evening can make a sad, knowing grin. However, a night? It never jokes. It is always grim, cruel, mysterious. What’s on your mind?”

“…How did you get in? When?” John was able to keep his voice from getting embarrassingly high-pitched. “Why didn’t I-“

“I blinked in,” Clarice rolled her eyes. “I’ve been here before, you know? And I got in just now – I know that this is your man-cave or whatever, but I am worried about you-“

Thunderbird opened his mouth and tried to reply, but nothing specific came to his mind. Therefore, he closed it and tried again. 

“I got nothing,” he finally admitted to Blink. “Evangeline sounds as if she and her people are ready to throw in the towel, and if they do it, we’re done. We got nothing, no back up, no infrastructure – we will be butt-naked, basically. I don’t really have anything or anyone else, and neither does Eclipse, or even the Struckers… okay, the last is a bad example,” he belatedly remembered about Andy, the missing Strucker, (sort of). 

“Lauren’s okay,” Clarice replied brightly, as she draped her arm over John’s shoulders, “but yes, I catch your meaning. You want to quit?”

“No,” John muttered, as Clarice began to, well, massage the knots out of his shoulders. “This feels good, incidentally. But also? We cannot quit, we cannot just leave all the people flailing in the wind; if we do that, then we will be frauds, and I hate that idea even more than the idea of the Hellfire Club.”

“Meh, I don’t know if they’re that bad – after that confrontation with the Frosts regarding Andy and Lorna we haven’t seen hide or hair of their Club, and to be honest, we encountered them first because the Frosts actually needed help-“

“They needed a fall guy – or several,” John muttered, unwilling to give their new enemies an inch. “They won’t fight fair, they are all about infiltrating and devouring from the inside out, like some sort of a parasite. At least the Sentinels try to fight fair – and yes, the choice between the rotting apples and all, but still, if we are giving our enemies credit-“

“Don’t know if the Clubbers consider us to be their enemy,” Clarice confessed. “They haven’t harassed us or anything-“

“Marcos thinks that it’s because of his and Lorna’s baby-“

“Marcos thinks-“

There was a knock on the door. “Yes?” Clarice opened it a crack, just in case something was wrong on the other side.

There was. Just not what she was expecting.

“The Hellfire Club people have kidnapped Marcos!” one of the newly rescued mutants who was standing on the other side exclaimed. “We need to rescue him or what?”

There was a pause as Clarice and John just looked at each other, and then John barreled through the doorway and down the corridor, the first strokes of a rescue plan already in his head. Shaking her head, Clarice followed – this was going to be a long night.


End file.
